Cristo Rey Jesuit founding President Fr. TJ Martinez, SJ has been busy around town promoting the school’s innovative and alternative education model.

On Wednesday, January 25th, he attended Children at Risk’s 6th Annual Children’s Summit on “New Messaging, New Media for a New Generation” at United Way of Greater Houston, participating on a Latino Children’s Panel about “Reaching the New Majority.” Fr. Martinez shared with public officials, community leaders and local and national experts how Cristo Rey Jesuit has successfully reached out to the Latino community as a great, affordable education option.

“Our experiences have taught us that marketing to our Latino population differs from our other populations,” said Martinez.

He described how Latinos respond primarily to a relational over information approach to marketing: “That is to say, we first had to earn their trust by allowing them to get to know us prior to telling them about our innovating program.”

Second, Fr. Martinez said that the oral word has a more powerful impact that the written word when it comes to explaining what the school is doing.

“Rather than wait for our Latino families to come to us, as some schools do, we realized we needed to go to them,” said Martinez. “We hit the streets, knocked on doors and reach out to as many people as possible. We run Cristo Rey Jesuit less as an educational institution and more like a grassroots campaign –and it is working!”